


High Noon Over Hyperion

by hopeless_eccentric



Series: Junoverse Cowboy AU [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Bandit Peter Nureyev, Canon Non-Binary Character, Cowboy AU, First Kiss, Happy Ending, Mentions of Gun Violence, Mentions of Violence, Nonbinary Juno Steel, Other, Sheriff Juno Steel, he's the rootinest tootinest bandit in the west y'all, murderous mask but not at all and they're also cowboys, no it isn't green, old timey hand kisses, simp juno steel, the Ruby 7 is a horse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25175368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: The bandit leaning up against the wall across from Sheriff Juno Steel had a lot of nerve looking like that. His hat, once brought low over his face, was an afterthought that clung to him only by the string around his neck. The man’s face bore a sharpened smile that danced in the flickering lamplight. With his back  against the wall and a long piece of grass lazing between his teeth, he gave Juno a long look head to toe, sizing him up.All and all, he looked pretty confident for a man condemned to die.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: Junoverse Cowboy AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823821
Comments: 13
Kudos: 110





	High Noon Over Hyperion

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, I did it again. Cowboy AUs are fun, okay? This is in the same universe as Red River Valley, and I think this is going to become a series of oneshots
> 
> Content warnings for one or two lines referencing gun violence, consistent references to a hanging, characters who end up fine in some solid mortal peril, consistent references to (and examples of) theft, imprisonment
> 
> Title is vaguely based off of High Noon Over Camelot by the Mechanisms. SOLID album, go check out and support indie artists!!

The bandit leaning up against the wall across from Sheriff Juno Steel had a lot of nerve looking like that. His hat, once brought low over his face, was an afterthought that clung to him only by the string around his neck. The man’s face bore a sharpened smile that danced in the flickering lamplight. With his back against the wall and a long piece of grass lazing between his teeth, he gave Juno a long look head to toe, sizing him up. 

All and all, he looked pretty confident for a man condemned to die. 

“You’ve got a lot of nerve looking at me like that,” Juno spat, forcing his gaze back on to the flickering oil lamp. 

“Forgive a man for enjoying his last pleasures before he hangs, Sheriff…” the man trailed off to squint at Juno through the darkness of the county jail’s single holding cell. 

“Sheriff Juno Steel.” 

Sheriff Juno Steel hated the things that man’s smile was doing to him. Maybe he was just tired, or lonely, or repressed, but the victorious grin that slid across his face as easy as a snake sliding into a chicken coop was making his gut burn in a way he knew was horribly wrong. 

“Juno,” the man repeated. The word seemed to drip from his lips. Juno’s face must have betrayed the jolt he felt, for the thief stood up a little straighter. “It’s a lovely name, fitting for such a lovely lady.” 

“That won’t work on me. You won’t be the first pretty neck the hangman’s broken, and you certainly won’t be the last.” 

Juno swore he didn’t mean to sound so disappointed. 

“Oh, dream a little, Juno,” the thief, honest to God, laughed. “If sitting here musing about such a loss is breaking your heart already, we might as well change the subject. To make a sweet lady sad is a sour offense.” 

“Shakespeare,” Juno noticed, raising his eyes from the flame. He knew it was a mistake, even as the burned impression of the light in his eyes mottled the thief’s waistcoat an iridescent green. He was no longer leaning against the far wall, but rather, leaning against the bars of the cell. The thief’s long, deft fingers ran up and down a bar thoughtfully, the other brushing hair from his face as he watched Juno speak. “Can’t say I expected a horse thief to be so well read.” 

The thief chuckled at that, mouth twitching as if laughing at a joke he felt no need to share. Between the movement of his hands and that damned smile, Juno would’ve thought the man to be a traveling hypnotist. 

“You underestimate me, my dear sheriff,” he mused, hands returning to his pockets as he continued to speak. “It pays to be well read as an enemy of the state. How else are you going to coerce innocent sheriffs into setting you free?” 

Juno wasn’t sure how much of that was a joke. The part of him that spoke with a voice of reason that sounded so much like the sheriff who had come before him said he didn’t want to find out. However, a concerningly large part of him begged to differ. 

“Enough games.” 

“Testy, are we?” 

“Just sick to hell of sitting here all night with a man who likes to hear himself talk,” Juno groaned. 

“Allow a dying man his final comforts,” the thief said. Had Juno not been watching those calculating eyes, he would’ve sounded absentminded. 

“Like what?” 

“Tormenting innocent sheriffs with my, as you put it, need to hear myself talk.” 

“Look,” Juno started. His heart was racing now, the feeling like a trapped animal in his chest was beating against the prison bars of his ribs. “You’re not getting anywhere just because you’re a pretty face.” 

“Sheriff!” The thief grinned. Juno could have sworn that look was sent from Hell to torment him specifically. “You think I’m pretty.” 

“I know you’re trying to play me.” 

“Well, pardon me for assuming, Juno, but I wasn’t exactly under the impression that you minded,” he huffed. 

“I didn’t,” Juno murmured before he could register or hold back the words. The thief raised an eyebrow as he leaned against a bar of the cell, slender fingers drumming on the metal as he sized Juno up.

Juno squeezed his eyes shut. He took a deep breath. He prepared to hand in his resignation as sheriff of the dusty little watering hole that consisted his entire world. 

Juno stood, sick of his eyes darting between the flame and the thief who twisted his gut into knots and made him choke on his words before they even left his mouth. The man placed a hand on the bar closest to his face. His gaze looked almost hungry.

Juno should have minded that. 

“I hate to have offended you, darling. It seems my tongue gets away from me under threat of death,” he said with a smile that suggested he would live another thousand years. 

So much about the nameless thief before him was an enigma. He was debonair from the moment he tried to rob Min Kanagawa to the moment the judge condemned him to hang at sunrise, and mere feet away from Juno in the flickering light of the oil lamp was no different. His ungloved hands and their unnaturally clean fingernails rested on the bars of the cell as if their primary function was to serve as hand rests. His face, now hardly a foot from Juno’s, wore a gentle sharpness with an uncanny ease. His fox’s smile ate Juno alive as he struggled to piece together words. 

“You’re not worried,” was all Juno could manage. 

“Of course not. You didn’t even complain when I let my wrists breathe,” the thief chuckled, gesturing to the remains of a length of rope on the floor. “I do hope you didn’t intend to reuse that.” 

Juno swallowed. 

“I wouldn’t mind giving a dying man a few small comforts,” he offered. He didn’t remember ever getting this close to the thief. The part of him that called itself sense ranted of hidden weapons and attempted thefts. Its voice was almost entirely drowned out by how soft the lips around that damned smile looked. 

“Juno,” the thief murmured, as if a million further meanings could be gleaned from the pair of syllables as they dripped from his lips into the hot night air. 

Maybe if the man’s eyes hadn’t been so soft or his gaze hadn’t been so earnest or if his lips hadn’t suddenly collided with Juno’s like a jumble of notes becoming a chord, Juno would have had the common sense not to play right into his hand. 

But the thief was clutching at his coat with hands soon to be cold and pale and six feet underground in an unmarked grave, and Juno felt a very cold something in him break. 

He had half a mind to break away and reach for his gun when the thief kissed him again, and with two iron bars and two soft hands and a pair of hips that burned with insistence pressing into him, there was hardly an argument to be made for what a better sheriff would do. It was hard to think about what a better sheriff would do with a gentleman thief worshipping his mouth, anyway.

When they broke apart, more than the desert heat had left him breathless. The condemned man, once again inches away from him, had kissed him with the promise of a million tomorrows. His face returned to its haughty grin after a moment, but not before Juno caught a look so soft and intimate he felt almost wrong having laid eyes upon it. 

“You know,” Juno finally breathed, hand sliding to his pocket. “I’m going to need that key back if I’m going to break you out.”

The thief blinked at him. He took a step backwards, and the small number of feet between them seemed an infinite chasm in the darkness. 

“You don’t have a reason to.”

Juno strolled back over to the lamp, returning only to hold the light up to the lock on the cell door. 

“If you’re going to get outta here, it’s not going to be alone. The door’s designed so you can’t unlock it from the inside. Doesn’t matter if your wrists are untied if you can’t get the key in the lock,” Juno explained, setting down the light at his feet as he held a hand out. “So, how about handing over that key?”

When the judge had condemned this man to hang, he had called the thief a danger to any stable society, who preyed upon those who had worked for their wealth the way a hawk preys upon the fattest and slowest rabbits. As he stood there, sharp cheekbones darkened by the angle of the flame and face darkened by Juno’s proposition, Juno could almost see what the judge had meant.

“I’m not an idiot, Sheriff,” the thief said. Juno could’ve sworn his face faltered, just for a moment, and betrayed a part of him that wanted to believe every single word Juno had said. 

“Never said you were. We’ve got a couple of hours left before the sun comes up, but you need a head start on the manhunt they’ll send after you. I might not consider the deputies the finest bunch of lawmen in the West, but their horses are fast,” Juno added, insistent hand slinking closer to the bars. 

“I meant that you didn’t have a reason to let me out. I’m sure you’re a wonderful actor, Juno, but forgive me for being wary of the assistant to my execution,” the thief spat. It was the harshest thing Juno had heard emerge from lips he only now realized he’d been staring at. It almost stung.

“Why did you rob Min Kanagawa?”

The thief raised an eyebrow. 

“I see. You’re dodging the question, Juno,” he nearly sneered. Juno’s chest burned at the way the nameless thief said his name, the word flung from his lips as if it burned to the touch. This feeling was only slightly remedied by something in the thief’s eyes that might have been pain.

“I’m not trying to be cute. Answer the question, and don’t sugarcoat it,” Juno began. “Why did you rob Min Kanagawa?”

“Because she looked rich.”

“Exactly. Oil baroness rich. And I’d bet my hat you put that together for yourself.”

That self-assured smile crept back onto the thief’s face and in recognition of this, the knot in Juno’s stomach tightened. 

“Are you flirting with me, Juno?”

“Maybe later. I’m trying to make a point, and every second matters. You robbed Min Kanagawa’s carriage because she’s the kind of rich person who never worked a day in their life for it. She married into the family and now with her husband dead and you going off to the hangman, she’s set for life.”

“You really believe I didn’t kill Croesus?”

“I’ve seen my fair share of bullet wounds. That was close range. You were on a horse outside the carriage. Do the math.”

Something soft crossed the thief’s face, as warm and quiet as the light that danced across it. For a brief, nonsensical moment, Juno wanted nothing more than to raise his hand and brush a patch of dust from where it lay across his cheekbone. It didn’t look bad. Rather, the smudge could have been a priceless piece of art mounted atop an even more beautiful pedestal, and Juno would have never known the difference. He wanted to know what that face felt like under touches both casual and intimate. He wanted nothing more than the forevers those lips had been promising him mere minutes ago. 

However, if a future at all meant a future apart, he was willing to make that sacrifice. 

“You’re an innocent man—“ Juno broke off, searching for a name in his memory and finding none. The bandit had given several to the judge, listing four or five aliases when the judge asked what name should be read before God when he was hanged the next morning. Had the whole thing made Juno less sick to his stomach, he would have laughed.

“Peter Nureyev,” he responded, swallowing as if he had signed his own death sentence in loosing that name upon the empty night air. Nureyev seemed to brace in wait of impact or reaction or terrible retribution, but none came. Rather, the words floated off with the easy night breeze and dissipated into the dark air around them. 

Nureyev let out a shaky breath.

“You’re an innocent man, Nureyev,” Juno finished. For the first time all evening, Nureyev laughed in earnest.

“I committed armed robbery, Juno. That hardly seems innocent to me.”

Juno groaned. “You know what I mean.”

“Don’t make a folk hero out of me just yet, Juno,” Nureyev smiled. He seemed to have regained some of the composure lost with the utterance of his name. “I don’t exactly steal from the rich and give to the poor.”

“Who do you give to?”

“Myself, usually. The collection tray at church, if I’m feeling particularly guilty,” Nureyev joked.

“Something tells me you’re not the churchgoing type,” Juno snorted.

“I haven’t been since I was a child.”

“I wouldn’t suggest going anytime soon if I were you. The minister’s in bed with the judge, and you know how quick his trigger finger is,” Juno explained, holding his hand out for the key once more. 

“Corruption on every level. I see,” Nureyev returned. 

“No, they’ve been married about a year now.”

Nureyev chuckled, though the sound died away as he looked back down at Juno’s calloused hand.

“How do I know this isn’t a trick?”

“You know Brock Engstrom?” Juno pressed. 

“What, the railway tycoon with a handful of half-rate gambling halls to his name?”

“That’s the one. His horse Ruby is supposed to be one of the best ones out there. Pretty docile to strangers, I’ve heard.”

“I’m sorry, but how is Brock Engstrom’s horse supposed to help me?” 

“Because he left her tied in front of the Old Hyperion Inn last night, and it would really be a shame if someone picked my pockets, snuck out when I wasn’t looking, and skipped town on the best damn horse this side of the Mississippi,” Juno hissed, giving a furtive glance towards the open window as he spoke. 

Juno felt the key drop into his hand. 

It was folded between a pair of hands so soft Juno hardly believed they belonged to the legendary thief who had spent the last two decades terrorizing those who had made it rich off dusty little boomtowns like Hyperion. 

When he finally looked up from their intertwined fingers, Nureyev kissed him again. His lips were just as tender as his hands, which gave Juno’s a little squeeze. 

Juno would have given anything for that moment to never end. 

Instead, with his head spinning and his heart aching and a million different doubts buzzing around his head like mosquitos at his ears, Juno pulled his hand away and placed the key inside the lock. 

Who the hell did he think he was? In doing this, he was signing off on a dozen more armed robberies, not to mention what else Peter Nureyev might do in his free time. All he knew about this man was that he was linked to more occasions of theft than Juno could bear to count and that he hadn’t killed a man on this one occasion. Who was to say he hadn’t killed before? Perhaps, he would even do so again. 

Those soft eyes met Juno’s once more, and Juno needed no more convincing to turn the key. 

The creak of the cell door was mercifully soft, making a noise like an owl as it swung open. Nureyev took a pair of resolute steps outside the cell before stopping and glancing around, as if he had yet to see the room from outside the bars. 

It took Juno far too long to realize what he was really looking at. 

“You look lovely without bars all around you, Sheriff Steel,” Nureyev grinned. 

Juno faltered for a moment, starting and stopping several sentences before he managed a response. 

“I could say the same about you, Nureyev.”

“Nureyev,” he repeated. “I like the way my name sounds coming from you, Juno.”

Juno snorted. “You don’t have time for this.”

Nureyev sighed, eyes still trailing behind on Juno as he turned towards the door. 

“I suppose I don’t, though—”

He broke off upon feeling a calloused hand catch his wrist. 

“Wherever you go, or whoever you become next—“ Juno broke off with a sigh, hardly able to meet Nureyev’s gaze. “Write to me, okay?”

“Juno,” Nureyev nearly laughed. “You make quite the bold assumption. I’m coming back for you, of course. If you ever want to get out of this place, I’ll tell you where to find me. Or, rather, I could simply spirit away the poor sheriff in the dead of night and let this town think you a dead hero.”

“I’ve got a friend or two who would kill me for real if I did that.”

Nureyev squeezed his hand, mere inches from hurrying away into the dark when he seemed to have one final second thought. He raised Juno’s hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the top of it before righting his hat upon his head and giving it a tip. Juno’s heart shouldn’t have fluttered nearly as much as it did. 

The pit in Juno’s stomach only seemed to deepen as he watched Nureyev go, disappearing down Main Street without a trace until a few minutes later when a song of pattering of hooves carried through the early morning air. 

He would have thought of the consequences of it all, had tiredness not weighed on his brain as heavily as the shadow of Peter Nureyev’s smile, flickering in his memory like the little flame that now served as his only company. Consequences itself was an issue that reeked of tomorrow, and he had much more to think about in the interim. 

Nureyev’s kiss still burned on his hand, the entry point of some elixir that had left him half trembling with the side effects of its ingredients: guilt, euphoria, love, and grief. 

He doubted a remedy existed, and if so, he doubted he would ever have a mind to take it. It was foolish to throw away such a gift. 

Juno didn’t know much about Peter Nureyev, and a large part of him was terrified to find out a thing more. 

If he knew one thing, however, that final kiss that set him ablaze in the early morning air had not meant goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: the google doc I wrote this in is called "rock and roll buckaroo"
> 
> Anyways, thank you so much for reading!! Make sure to smash that kudos button, leave a comment below, and don't forget to be awesome!!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric !!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [High Noon Over Hyperion [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29015994) by [ellevenstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellevenstar/pseuds/ellevenstar), [kopescetic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kopescetic/pseuds/kopescetic)




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